Donald Trump Just Took The First Step In Selling Off Our National Parks To The Highest Bidder
The National Parks system spent the last 101 years “[protecting] America’s treasured natural, historical, and cultural sites, and [ensuring] that Americans can enjoy those treasures.” Millions of people visit the parks every year. Families on budgets plan their vacations there. And Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park—they’ve never been more popular. Last year, 330 million people went to the parks, marking three years in a row with increased attendance.
Despite the parks’ successes, President Trump is privatizing most of the 400 owned U.S. sites and 59 National Parks. He’s cutting funds for lands where low-income and middle-class Americans have escaped to for a century.
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced that the Trump administration plans to utilize “public-private partnerships” so that Trump can cut $1.5 billion from the department’s budget. “Public-private partnership,” says the non-profit National Resources Defense Council, is “code for privatizing the management of our national park system. The idea is both unpopular (huge majorities of Americans in virtually every demographic oppose privatization) and unwise (our national parks are a public good and therefore should be publicly managed).”
The move is getting criticism for its impact on non-wealthy Americans, and its impact on the park employees. “Secretary Zinke is throwing hardworking park rangers under the bus,” says Chris Saeger, executive director fo the Western Values Project,” while advocating for a budget that cuts essential funding and allows special interests to drill and mine public lands with virtually no accountability.”
Others are angry by the hypocritical promises of Trump. “If Donald Trump is actually interested in helping our parks,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, “he should stop trying to slash their budgets to historically low levels. America’s parks and the people and economies they support need real funding, not a giant fake check.”
Trump is cutting taxes for the rich, and making sure that lower-income and middle-class Americans pay for it however they can. Even if means taking away their chance to just see Old Faithful.
Source:- https://www.leftscoop.com/2017/06/donald-trump-just-took-first-step-selling-off-national-parks-highest-bidder/
